


Domestic Adventure 3 Words Collide

by SereneSorrow



Series: Domestic Adventures [3]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Bull!Ichigo, Butterfly!Aizen, Crossover, Dimension Travel, Falcon!Ichigo, GinIchi Day 2020, Kitsune Ichimaru Gin, Kitsune Kurosaki Ichigo, Lizard!Ichigo, M/M, Snake!Gin, fox!Gin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25863658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SereneSorrow/pseuds/SereneSorrow
Summary: An unexpected trip for our favorite pet reptiles leads to their grandest adventure yet.
Relationships: Ichimaru Gin & Kurosaki Ichigo, Ichimaru Gin/Kurosaki Ichigo
Series: Domestic Adventures [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1627123
Kudos: 12
Collections: GinIchi Day 2020





	Domestic Adventure 3 Words Collide

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning, part 1 of 2.
> 
> So this story is a continuation of Domestic Adventure and Domestic Adventure 2, but is also a crossover with two of my other stories:  
> Two-Tails  
> I Close My Eyes, I Take A Chance  
> I don't think you have to read those to follow this story? For one thing, the tie in to I Close My Eyes, I Take A Chance takes place at around chapter 14, but that story hasn't been written that far yet, so if it doesn't make sense now then it wouldn't make sense anyway?

Butterflies have a long and sordid history of possessing great power. Step on a butterfly and you can change time itself. A butterfly flaps its wings and the winds change, creating storms that can cross oceans and decimate coastlines. Butterflies have long been an omen of change and a feared harbinger of destruction, but sometimes there comes a truly singular butterfly, one in many generations possessing even greater power than can control the weather.

Sosuke surveyed the world below him and flitted lazily about, drifting on the winds as he was deep in thought. The pressures built up within him sought an outlet, and he decided exactly how he would release them. Ferociously determined, he flapped his purple and white wings once, setting off a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Twice, raising a typhoon in the East China Sea. Three times, and a twist in time and space brought many worlds together.

***

The storm outside howled, rattling the windows and making the lights flicker. Ichigo crouched low against the wood chips and tucked all four feet in close, his neck scrunching as he hunched over. This was the first really big storm he had ever experienced, and the loud sounds startled and scared him.

Suddenly there came the loudest crash yet and the rattling of the windows increased to a continuous vibration in their frames before the sound of splintering glass filled the large room that their box resided in. Ichigo flinched, startled by the close destruction even as the strong wind blew into the room, sending the blue hanging things around the window to fanning and fluttering out until they fell from where they hung and were cast across the room.

“Ichi!” Gin's voice hissed as loud as Ichigo had ever heard it and yet still barely a whisper over the wind.

Coils of scales enveloped him as Gin surrounded him, while their box shuddered and tipped, and before Ichigo could ask what was happening the box was falling. His feet were no longer on the wood chips, and he tried to find a grip on Gin's scales but both of their bodies twisted as they fell through open air, and then the hard wind blasted them apart and Ichigo's wind blinded eyes lost sight of the silver snake that he had so recently come to love as he was set adrift without anchor in the wind.

Dizzy, fluttering like a leaf, he lost all sense of time and place. He didn't know how long he was buffeted about, before coming to rest, and he was so dazed that he fell unconscious for a span of time before awakening in a tree. Sorting out the fact that he was still all in one piece, and gingerly rising to his feet as he shook off the wavering uncertainty of his physical and mental cohesion, Ichigo slowly observed his surroundings.

After a while he realized that he was hearing a sort of crying sound, as he shook his head a bit the orange lizard made a conscious effort of checking for predators nearby and then crept up a close tree branch and looked around. Through the leaves he could see a fox caught in a bush, but it was a strange fox with a voice that called differently than he felt it should and the sound made him pause as he contemplated if it was a dangerous fox. It had two tails, Ichigo could see them both swishing through the barbs on the bush's branches. Taking a chance, Ichigo crept slowly and carefully down the branches and trunk of the tree, wondering if he could learn where he was if not what had happened to him from the small (but much larger than himself) fox.

“Hello?” Ichigo risked saying, the fox was probably a predator, but it sounded like a baby and so he felt badly that it was stuck in the bush.

“Hu?” The fox-kit startled at his voice, sniffling and looking around for the source as he slowly stopped straining against the bush and flopped down to sit among the prickly branches.

“Hello.” Ichigo said again, creeping just a step forward on his branch so that the fox-kit might see him but he still wasn't too close. At least the fox-kit was stuck and couldn't snap at him.

“Hello?” The fox-kit asked, blinking in confusion as he leaned toward him curiously.

Before they could further their exchange there was a loud rustling and thumping sound, and out of the trees stomped a larger creature. A big mammal with horns, that neither of them had ever seen before. He was a darker red color than the fox-kit or the lizard, and he snorted and looked between them when he stopped.

“Hello.” He grumbled at the both of them, at least not looking like he might attack, though they both shrank away.

“Hello. My name is Ichigo.” The orange lizard told the orange fox and red animal.

“But, my name is Kurosaki Ichigo.” The two-tailed fox piped up in reply, losing his fear of the big mammal when he didn't attack either of them.

“Hmm, my name is Kurosaki.” The bull told the two small animals. He knew a lizard and certainly knew a fox when he saw them, but he would have to ask Ichimaru about foxes with two-tails as he had never seen such a thing before.

“Umm... I suppose you could call me Ichi... Gin calls me Ichi sometimes.” The lizard said from his tree branch, head cocked to one side as he considered it while the other two listened to him.

“Gin!” The fox-kit exclaimed suddenly, ears perking up in realization. “Gin can help me out of the bush!” Then he looked down as his ears slumped again, “Gin isn't here though.”

Kurosaki stomped forward, making Ichigo cower a bit instinctively, but Kurosaki just stomped on the bush until several branches broke and Ichigo came free. Popping out of the bush and scampering a few feet away nervously, the fox-kit shook out his tails and tried to look like he wasn't scared after all, only to shoot right up to Kurosaki's hooves when they heard a sound that each of them were instinctively wary of.

In fact they all three of them jumped when they heard the rustling and clattering noises of a human loudly struggling through the forest, and they stood frozen while the strange human moved away from them along a path and Ichi for one would have liked to hide with Ichigo behind someone big and strong like Kurosaki. Humans were strange and dangerous, even if the ones who kept Ichi in the box with Gin were nice enough to feed them.

When the normal sounds of the forest returned around them, bugs chirping and the cry of a bird of prey flying by overhead, the three of them relaxed again and looked to each other for their next move.

“Where are we?” Ichi asked in the silence between them.

“I'd like to know that too.” Kurosaki was dismayed that the lizard and the fox both professed to being lost as well.

“I think we're still in the Hokumen Forest.” The fox-kit said as he nosed around at a few trees. “Oh! Then Gin can help now too! The shrine shouldn't be too far away.”

“Shrine?” Kurosaki wasn't familiar with this word, and neither was Ichi.

“It's a magic house for prayers and wishes, there are _lots_ of stairs.” Ichigo explained to his two new friends.

“Where is it?” Ichi asked, looking around and seeing nothing but trees, nothing like the place where he and Gin's box was always kept.

“Um... it's really tall up on a hill? There aren't as many trees there.” The fox-kit looked puzzled, and Kurosaki wasn't confidant that he could direct them, but there weren't any other options being presented.

“Maybe you can see it from up high?” Kurosaki directed toward the lizard, who thought for a moment with a critical eye turned to the branches above before bobbing his head and starting up the tree trunk.

They had to wait for a while, and Kurosaki finally became fed up with Ichigo's prancing about, instead boosting him up into the tree branches to climb higher and offer Ichi a bit more advice about what to look for, for this 'shrine'. While Kurosaki stared up at the two small flashes of orange-red high up in the tree, Ichi startled and shied away from Ichigo when he joined the lizard on his branch.

“I think it's that way... maybe?” Ichigo was staring at a dip in the trees where the forest looked like it had thinned out. “I think it's hiding... sometimes people can't find it... Gin likes to trick people sometimes...”

Ichi flicked his own tongue in the way he'd learned to mimic from Gin, feeling a little irritated that Ichigo hadn't mentioned before that he might not even be able to see this 'shrine' from up here. Instead of criticizing though, because the fox was younger than him, he just agreed that they may as well try that direction and then the two of them returned to the lowest branches of the tree.

“We can't see it clearly, but the trees break in that direction, although it's fairly far away.” Ichi told Kurosaki once they were close enough to speak again.

“You may as well ride on my back then, you won't be very heavy and it will be too slow if you have to walk.” Kurosaki wasn't going to wait around for tiny lizard steps when he didn't need to, even if he didn't like strangers riding on his back, even Gin was only allowed to do that when he was in a good mood.

Ichi half fell out of the tree but he managed to catch himself on Kurosaki's broad back before he tumbled all the way to the ground. In contrast, Ichigo happily jumped down and landed well, settling in on Kurosaki's fore-shoulders and looking around excitedly as Kurosaki started off in the direction they'd decided to travel. Ichigo didn't get to see from up so high while moving very often, so he stayed put even though he wanted to run ahead and duck through all the bushes just for fun.

It took several hours filled with chatter from the two tailed fox and simple commentary from the lizard with a few gruff answers from the bull, but they finally reached the break in the trees that Ichigo had pointed out. As they came out of the trees there was a stone road, all by itself in the woods, and walking along it brought them to the stairs that Ichigo had described.

Kurosaki stared upward, eyes wide in shock at just how many stairs there were. He'd never seen so many, five steps was the most he had ever seen personally although Gin had told him stories from places that he had snuck into where there were a dozen stairs or more but this was many, many more than that. With a grunt he started up the towering stairway anyway, maneuvering himself carefully so that he didn't lose his balance and fall. With just the first hoof he placed on the stair, Kurosaki had felt a strangeness that he couldn't explain, but he continued onward when neither of his companions mentioned feeling it themselves.

The slog up the steep stone steps left Kurosaki breathing hard, and he'd even taken two breaks on the larger steps that stretched between sets of stairs. Finally they reached the last set of steps though, where they could see that at the top a stone building with pillars and statues was framed by one last red gate.

Ichigo lept down from Kurosaki's back and onto the stone steps but the lizard stayed where he was, it would take him far longer to get anywhere the two of them were going if he was on his own. Just before Kurosaki had finished climbing the last ten steps he took another break, watching Ichigo proceed.

“Gin!” The little fox called excitedly as he bounded up the last of the steps that the bull was having so much trouble with.

From deeper inside the doorway emerged a human, no there was something strange about this human, but Ichigo and Kurosaki weren't sure how he was different. The human knelt down and ran his hands over the fox-kit, lifting his paws and inspecting for injuries while Ichigo fidgeted, unaware of the reason for the human's inspection. Finding nothing but a few pulled hairs from where Ichigo had been stuck in the bush the human patted the fox-kit on the head and then scooped up Ichigo into his arms. The fox-kit squealed and kicked his paws in the air when he wound up on his back, embarrassed and struggling to right himself.

“Gin!” Ichigo whined as he nonetheless nuzzled the human's neck and relaxed against his chest.

“What have we here?” The human asked as he eyed the two of them still approaching.

“They're me!” Ichigo said as his attention was drawn back to them again. “Ichi is the lizard, and Kurosaki is the bull!”

“Oh? Is that right?” One hand reached carefully for Kurosaki's forehead as he crested the last step.

It was a strange feeling, something that he could sense but not explain engulfing his head and horns. The 'shrine' felt a bit the same, but Kurosaki couldn't explain it. Still on his head, Ichi shuddered and hissed in discomfort, and then for just a moment they could both see something strange. The man in front of them, who was Ichigo's Gin, wasn't a man at all. He had nine large tails spread out behind him and pointy fox ears on his head, and Kurosaki and Ichi were left squinting in a strange light that shone from him as the man pulled his hand away.

“Incredible. You really are both Ichigo, different souls from different worlds, but Ichigo all the same.” The fox-man-Gin shared with them.

“We're lost.” Ichi said simply. “Ichigo said you maybe can help?”

“Well, with my full power, perhaps I could find a way to send you back, but we should determine how this occurred first. Depending on how you were brought here there might be a reason that you are here, and sending you back too soon could be dangerous.” Fox-man-Gin said as he patted Ichigo's head.

“What are you? I know foxes, and he isn't a normal fox, and you aren't a normal man.” Kurosaki insisted on asking, too suspicious of the strange power that this Gin possessed.

“Ah? Are there none like me where you live? We are called Kitsune, the nine-tailed fox. Ichigo is still very young and has only earned one extra tail. There are many legends but it is probably irrelevant if you don't already know of us.” Gin, the 'kitsune' said.

Kurosaki didn't much like the idea of not really knowing what the 'kitsune' was, but the Gin that he knew was tricky like that sometimes, so maybe this Gin was just secretive and not dangerous. It looked like he cared about Ichigo well enough, so maybe he really would help them. Ichi didn't seem to have any reservations anyway, easily hopping from Kurosaki's head and onto Gin's outstretched hand, then crawling up to his shoulder while the man led them all into the 'shrine'.

Inside the shrine was darker, but also cooler, and not entirely made of stone after all. Gin set Ichigo back on his feet on the stone floor, and the two-tailed fox wended around their feet excitedly. There was also another fox in the room, this one grey furred and with three tails. This fox, introduced by name as Shinso, quickly herded Ichigo onto a cushion just in another room and started grooming the tangles and handful of barbs out of his fur despite his whining about getting to see what the 'other Ichigos' were doing.

“The way Ichigo suddenly disappeared from here and reappeared elsewhere is what concerns me the most, it could be a coincidence that you all met, and there could be more of you in this world.” Gin said as they walked.

“So we need to find other Ichigos?” Ichi asked with a tilt of his head to look at Gin's face so close to his own.

“Yes, but that should be easy with my star ball, certainly if they landed within my domain as the two of you did.” Gin explained as he entered another room.

This one was darker except for a faint, muted glow on a raised shelf in the wall. It looked surprisingly hard to get to, and Kurosaki felt as though he was held back by a massive spider's web that he couldn't see, so he halted halfway into the room. Gin stopped suddenly, radiating surprise, and Kurosaki craned his head around to try to catch what he had seen.

“Gin?” Ichi asked from Gin's shoulder, but he wasn't speaking to the kitsune.

On the shelf, the glow moved slightly and the head of a snake rose up over it. Gin the kitsune allowed Ichi to crawl down his arm and onto the shelf to join the snake, who happily exclaimed “Ichi!” in reply to Ichi's own inquiry.

“I take it you are my own counterpart from Ichi's world? My name is also Gin.” The kitsune said to the snake as he stared with that same surprised look on his face.

“Yess, I'm Gin, this is _my_ Ichi.” The snake insisted in a territorial tone of voice.

“Ah, did you swallow the ball full of stars that was sitting on that shelf?” Gin asked his reptilian counterpart.

“Glowing egg?”Gin the snake asked as he shifted again and the faint glowing light shifted with him.

“Gin! You ate the magic ball?” Ichi asked in a scandalized tone, prodding at his love with one foot.

“It wass warm! I wass hungry... the bird tried to eat me and dropped me here sso I found ssomewhere to hide, and found the glowing egg.” Gin explained while shifting again, around Ichi this time, with the glowing light following him.

“You ate my star ball.” The kitsune said faintly, staring at the snake while he moved.

“Is it okay?” Ichi asked, staring at the glow about a third of the way down Gin's body.

“Well, it won't digest, so it's going to get stuck somewhere.” The kitsune mused, shaking himself out of his shock. “We'll have to remove it somehow, without harming you of course since we don't know what will happen if any of you die.”

Ichi and Gin appreciated that the human-shaped Gin was going to try _not_ to hurt Gin, though they were still worried and shifted closer together.

“This is also evidence that it isn't just Ichigo who has been pulled from other worlds but myself as well, which could mean something entirely different as to the cause of the phenomenon.” The kitsune continued.

“Such as what?” Kurosaki asked with an irritated flick of his ears.

“Well when it was only counterparts of Ichigo it could have been the boy playing around again and accidentally tripping over some leftover spell and inadvertently summoning you. With counterparts of at least one other person it becomes something that was done _to_ us, not something that was done by us.” The kitsune explained ominously.

Kurosaki had no idea why anyone would want to 'summon' him, or Ichimaru if Ichimaru was Gin's 'counterpart', and he wondered where exactly Ichimaru was now if he hadn't been in the forest with him. Now he was worried, he didn't want his friend to be lost or injured.

“Sso how are you going to make me un-eat the glowing egg?” Gin asked from where he was curled around Ichi in the dark alcove.

“Hmm. Well, vomiting isn't pleasant for snakes, but I can induce the urge since it's a simple enough trick. You might feel a little ill for the rest of the day but it's far better than cutting you open.” The kitsune said as he raised one hand that suddenly seemed to have claws toward the reptiles.

“No hurting Gin!” Ichi said suddenly, stepping forward between the two.

Kurosaki was impressed by the lizard's bravery, he wasn't quite half the snake's length, and barely larger than the kitsune's clawed hand. The man tilted his head as he continued reaching for the snake.

“As I said, I won't unduly injure him, but the star ball has to come out. If it doesn't it could block his intestine and kill him anyway.” The kitsune reached right over Ichi's head and ran the back of one claw over Gin's stomach, a straight line down his body and crossing over the glow of the star ball in his stomach.

With a hiss and a shiver that rippled down his long body, Gin squirmed around and his whole body tightened. Kurosaki didn't really want to stay and watch a snake vomiting up a magic orb, so he turned from the doorway and went back to the room where Ichigo was just jumping down from the pillow he'd been resting on, escaping the grey foxes grooming.

“What's going on? Why are you back? What's Gin doing?” Ichigo asked excitedly as he wound around Kurosaki's hooves.

“Gin says that his star ball can help us, but a Gin who is a snake ate it, so we're waiting for him to vomit.” Kurosaki reported, making the grey fox's nose scrunch in disgust and Ichigo bark out an odd laugh before making his way toward that particular spectacle curiously.

Kurosaki and Shinso were of a similar mind however, and went out to the edge of the shrine by the stairs to wait for all of that mess to be done with. It didn't take as long as Kurosaki had thought for Gin to stride triumphantly through the door with a strangely sunset colored ball with several stars set deep within it in one hand. The silver scaled snake draped over his shoulders looked like it was drooling, and Kurosaki didn't know that snakes could drool, so he was probably still sick. Ichi perched tightly on Gin's arm next to his friend, while Ichigo darted excitedly around Gin's feet.

“I think we'd better head back to an open space in the woods for this, we don't know how many of you there are and the magic here can interfere with magic that moves things through spaces.” Gin said as he started down the stairs, and Kurosaki snorted in irritation at the prospect of walking all the way back down all of those stairs.

Finally, after walking back the way they had come for nearly a mile, they stopped in a smaller clearing that had been hidden along the route Ichigo had lead them along to the shrine in the first place. Gin directed the rest of them to stand a few feet away from him and then he held the star ball in both hands and did several things at once that were hard to follow. There were words but none of them could hear them properly, and Gin's shape looked at once the man that was already before them, the man with fox tails and a silver-furred fox much larger than any normal fox and with the same nine tails.

Kurosaki shook his head to clear the ringing in his ears, while Gin the snake curled up around Ichi with a hissing groan of discomfort. Ichigo on the other hand laughed excitedly and his two tails swished through the air in a way that made Kurosaki believe he could understand what he was hearing and feeling much better than the rest of them could. Gin's words, or whatever he had done, were over quickly after that and there was a sense of being pulled or pulling on something that settled over all of them until there seemed to be a yank and the feeling snapped away.

Around them, three more animals appeared as they were drawn by the magic. Suddenly a falcon winged into the clearing and swooped down to land on a rock in front of them, while a silver-furred fox came skidding out of the trees as though he'd been running as fast as he could, and then a spotted green snake with a nearly silver underbelly tumbled out of the trees in a flurry of leaves.

“What was that? Who are you?” The falcon shrieked, wings spread wide and talons scratching at the rock threateningly while the spotted snake moved away from the bird of prey through the grasses.

Kurosaki was just happy that Ichimaru was here where he could look after him again, and the silver fox darted over to him and nudged his leg in their familiar way, just as happy to see him too.

“We are you, the both of you. While Ichigo and I” the kitsune indicated the two-tailed fox who was now distracted and appeared to be playing in the grass a few feet away “are native to this world, somehow several of our counterparts from other worlds have been pulled here. I believe I can find a way to reverse the effect, if not the cause, but it was wisest to gather everyone first to ensure no one was stranded and that there was not some larger act at work.”

“Is that what's happened?” A voice asked, slightly less drawling than the kitsune's but otherwise much the same.

They all looked around and saw two humans about to step out of the treeline, one who looked nearly identical to Gin the kitsune save for his pure white clothing, and another who had hair the color of Ichigo's fur.

“Why am I a bunch of different animals? You at least have one human counterpart.” The orange haired man asked with a scowl that looked less like anger and more like his natural expression.

“Hmm, I don't think he is human actually.” The one who looked like Gin said as he shrewdly observed his most similar counterpart.

“Indeed not.” The kitsune said as he subtly tucked the star ball into one sleeve, hiding it from the human's sight when he hadn't minded if the animal counterparts had seen it.

“Gin, look! Butterfly!” The two-tailed fox called from the grasses, but the kitsune was concentrating on the humans and didn't look away.

Ichigo felt completely out of his depth as he looked between his soulmate and the near mirror image of him who was surrounded by all the animals. _'Not human?'_ He thought to himself as he tried to imagine what they were talking about.

“So... you said something about getting us all back home?” Ichigo tried instead, wondering if it was something like the strange pulling sensation that had led both himself and Gin to shunpo in this direction as fast as they could for no apparent reason.

“Of course.” The strange Gin said after a moment and only slowly looking away from Ichigo's soulmate. “It will take a bit of study but parting the worlds around you all was done once, and the touch of it is still upon you, so parting it again in reverse will only take a significant measure of will. There are preparations to be made as well, but it can be done.”

“Ya' don't mind if I look over your shoulder, do ya'? I'm not about to take chances.” The human Gin told his strange counterpart, while Ichigo looked between them nervously.

Ichigo had a feeling that this was going to take a while, and he didn't want to see these two get in a fight. Not that he really understood what was happening here, but somehow he found it hard to doubt the strange and unfamiliar Gin, he just seemed so much like the man that he'd been getting to know. His own Gin always kept so much a secret, played everything so close to the chest, that Ichigo had already gotten used to having no choice but to trust him or drive himself crazy. Even if Gin didn't trust _himself_ , Ichigo was willing to put his faith in the man until it was proven unwise, in the hope that they could figure all of this out together.

Putting a hand on Gin's wrist, and actually able to touch him in the flesh which was a marvel even if it didn't actually feel so much different, Ichigo tried to convey his own confidence to his soulmate. Gin glanced aside at him, finally breaking the stare he'd had with his counterpart, and sighed but nodded in agreement to Ichigo's widening smile.

The menagerie gathered around them all exchanged glances, shrugs and other gestures of confusion, bewildered by the humans strange difficulty with their situation of displacement and the logical attempt to correct it. Humans were strange creatures indeed.

To Be Continued

**Author's Note:**

> I just named the Hokumen Forest that because apparently hokumen means 'north face, north side' and Rangiku and Gin lived in the north 64 rukon district...  
> also, people years wise, kitsune Ichigo is older than lizard Ichigo, but by rate of aging the lizard has matured faster than the kitsune.
> 
> so here's a list of nonsense, Gin and Ichigo's relationships:  
> adoptive father and son - the kitsune [Two-Tails]  
> brothers/friends - the bull and the fox  
> in love - the silver snake and the lizard [Domestic Adventure 2]  
> enemies - the falcon and the green snake (spotted bush snake)  
> soulmates - the soul reapers [I Close My Eyes, I Take A Chance]


End file.
